


Written on His Skin

by LearnedFoot



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Loyalty, M/M, Rescue, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25396051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/pseuds/LearnedFoot
Summary: Diarmuid had never questioned that his life belonged to God.After all, it was written on his skin.
Relationships: Brother Diarmuid/The Mute
Comments: 22
Kudos: 65
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	Written on His Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intoxicatelou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/gifts).



> This is my first ever attempt at writing a soulmark AU. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> CNTW only because of Diarmuid's ambiguous canon age. He is whatever age you think he is in canon.

Diarmuid had never questioned that his life belonged to God.

After all, it was written on his skin.

***

“See?” he showed the Mute, early in their friendship, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the cross, dark on the inside of his right wrist.

The Mute took his hand, tracing the mark with a trembling finger, pausing at its flared edges. His mouth formed a silent _oh_ ; when he removed his hand and looked up, his eyes were filled with questions.

“It’s a soulmark,” Diarmuid prompted. Unlike many of the other brothers, he did not believe this stranger a halfwit. Yes, when he rescued him he’d been murmuring delirious nonsense, but that was only dehydration. In the months since he returned to health, there’d been nothing but intelligence behind his silence. “Do you know soulmarks?”

The Mute tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed. Maybe he didn’t. The marks were unusual even in these lands, where magic ran deep; they said some go a lifetime without ever meeting a person with their soul on their skin. It was not so strange to think such marks were even rarer in whatever far land the Mute called home. 

“Some people are marked by God,” Diarmuid patiently explained. “Not many, but some. Normally, they share their mark with another, and that is a sign they are meant to spend their lives side-by-side. It’s a blessing, a kindness from our Lord, to show them their best path.” He rubbed his own mark, running a thumb over the spot where the Mute had so reverently hovered moments before. “But I share my mark with the son of God,” he added, in case it was not as obvious to the Mute as it had been to his family, the monks—every person he ever met, really. “My partnership is with Christ. I was made to serve.”

He looked at the Mute to make sure he understood, and was met with wide-eyed awe. It was a familiar expression. Diarmuid did not feel particularly holy, but many took the mark to mean he was special in the eyes of God. It always made him uncomfortable; he was unworthy of the way people gazed at him. But it spoke well of the stranger that he had an awe of God, even if he misplaced that awe in Diarmuid.

That was the moment Dirmuid decided the Mute could be trusted entirely.

***

Diarmuid did not question when the Mute became his silent shadow, clinging to his steps as often as the demands of monastery life allowed. Diarmuid was the only one willing to speak freely to their lay brother, trusting him to understand. Not that the other brothers were unkind, but they spoke down to him. Some more than others, but in all there was a touch of slowness around the words, a tone that got louder, simpler: they thought him dumb.

That, Diarmuid figured, was why their companionship started, and by the end of the Mute’s first year at the monastery it was impossible to imagine anything else. Their steps fell together naturally, the Mute’s silent company as comforting to Diarmuid as he hoped his chatter was to the Mute.

“The other brothers love you,” Diarmuid once told his friend, as they trekked in the cool of the deep woods, searching for mushrooms. “They are all very patient with me, and of course they never question that I belong here, as, well…” He raised his wrist and twisted it to show off the mark. “But they were growing tired of all my talk before you came. Sometimes Brother Rua still lectures me on the holiness of quiet.” He reflected on what he just said. “That must make _you_ very holy. Have you ever considered that?”

The Mute glanced over from where he was examining the underside of a log. His expression was pure skepticism.

“Well, they appreciate you, anyway.” Then, in case that be taken the wrong way, he added, “I appreciate you, too. I hope you know that by now.”

The Mute merely grunted and returned to his work, but Diarmuid took it as confirmation.

(See? They got along, and understood each other, so there was nothing to wonder about.)

***

Then Diarmuid stumbled on the Mute in prayer, and the bottom dropped out of his world.

***

He stared at the expanse of skin unknowingly exposed, mouth gone tacky at the sight of all that muscle, so unlike any unclothed body he had seen before. His only point of comparison was his own scrawny figure, and the occasional brother he tended in illness. He had been too young when the Mute was rescued to be part of the group that nursed him back to health. Never had he imagined a man could look like that.

Never, too, had he imagined so many scars in one place; he had no idea how a person could bare so much pain.

But most of all, so startling his mind almost could not comprehend what his eyes told it: never, not ever, not even once, had he thought he would see a cross like that on another person’s skin.

***

He spent the rest of the day in a daze, one foot plodding in front of the other as they made their way through unfamiliar forest, not able to register the shifting landscape. Before, the journey was as exciting as it was frightening, every moment something to imprint in memory—a collection of new experiences to horde close. Today, there was no room for that in his thoughts.

He was being absurd, he insisted to himself, over and over. He knew of tattoos, of course; ink sticks that imitated soulmarks but meant no such thing. Decorative patterns, war cries, even declaration of holy purpose: those man-made marks could mean many things, but they remained man-made. They had nothing to do with the symbols the chosen few were born with.

And it was a cross, the most beloved badge of their Lord. He had heard the whispered speculation from his brothers since the moment the Mute came to them. _Crusades_. A word that always filled him with a vague sense of dread; glorious but terrible. If the Mute had indeed fought for God, it was not hard to imagine he had his holy purpose written across his skin.

And, and—and Diarmuid had been too distant to get a good look. He had the vague impression the Mute’s cross flared like his, but that was hardly a unique design. Surely if he looked up close he would see it was only a coincidence; a likeness, but not the exact replica the tales told.

Yes, he almost convinced himself by the end of the day. Coincidence.

***

But then the Mute came to his rescue, menacing the Baron’s terrifying son. He was without a shirt, again, and so much closer. Diarmuid could not help himself from saying, “Wait,” as the Mute turned to leave.

The Mute froze, caught like an animal in a trap. He would not look Diarmuid in the eye, yet he also did not flee, although there was nothing keeping him in place except for Diarmuid’s instruction.

Did his words really have so much power?

He approached the Mute with tentative steps, circling him until that impressive back was in clear view. The Mute watched him, head twisting over his shoulder to track his movements. Silent—not only with his mouth, but also his eyes, which gave away nothing when normally they gave Diarmuid so much.

Diarmuid stared at the cross, bold against the uneven patchwork of scars that made up the Mute’s skin. This close, this still, there was no question. Despite his certainty, Diarmuid raised his wrist, holding it up for comparison. As if he did not know his own mark by heart.

(As if he had not known, somewhere deeper than reason, since the moment he saw that symbol on the one person he always wanted by his side.)

Diarmuid swallowed. He tried to make words. He did not, could not—

What words would be enough for this?

He remembered the bewilderment on the Mute’s face, the first time he’d shown him his mark. The wonder. He remembered every second the Mute spent by his side; the devotion he never questioned, because it seemed so natural.

“You knew,” he realized. “All this time. You…you knew and you did not tell me?”

The Mute opened his mouth, eyes begging for something Diarmuid could not place. And then, as if a spell was broken, he turned and strode away, leaving Diarmuid with nothing but the twitter of birds and the sound of his own heart thudding in his ears.

***

He should be angry. He should be betrayed. He tried to summon those feelings; fury at information withheld, trust broken. But it was like trying to pick up the tune to a hymn he did not quite know: he could catch a glimpse of the emotion, but it refused to solidify into place.

In truth, the only thing he felt was confused.

***

Then, very quickly, confusion was overridden by panic and pain and fear; there was no room for doubt in the middle of a massacre.

***

As he clung to the Mute, shaking from the adrenaline of assault, whispered entreaty— _we have to go_ , _we have to go_ —falling instinctually from his lips, it became clear to himself that no trust was broken here. Not when it mattered.

He had so many questions, but the Mute was not one of them.

***

He offered himself to hold the relic because someone had to do it, but maybe also as a test. Perhaps if the Lord allowed him to carry the rock in his bare hands and live, he could take that as confirmation of what he had always known: his calling is with the Church, regardless of what his cross repeated on another man’s skin may have to say on the matter.

***

God did not strike him dead. And yet, that did not end his questions. But he had no time to ask them, no privacy; no words, even. What would he ask? Who?

He wished he could talk to Brother Ciarán. He had always been so kind and patient with him. The realization that he would never hear the man’s wisdom again was enough to make his knees buckle.

(The Mute was by his side in an instant, steadying him as he stumbled.

“Thank you,” Diarmuid whispered, and when the Mute tried to pull away, he caught the edge of his sleeve. “Walk by my side a while,” he added. “Please?”

Silently, the Mute obeyed.)

***

Clarity came in the sound of swords smashing together; Geraldus called it bells, but there was nothing beautiful in the crash of metal against metal, only dread.

Geraldus spoke of an army of men like the Mute, and in those words Diarmuid heard not glorious purpose but fatal mistake. The pain that ran through the Mute’s soul, the violence in his hands—that was not what made him holy. That was not what made him good, or beautiful, or kind. That was not God’s will.

And neither was this journey.

Diarmuid had not been promised to God. He had been promised to the man they left on that shore, and it was not— _could_ not—be God’s plan that he died while Diarmuid sailed away. That was not how the marks were supposed to work. It was not right.

He knew, instantly, with perfect certainty, what he must do.

***

When the boatman asked where to go next, there was only one possible answer: back. Back, and the Mute had to be alive, because he was Diarmuid’s, and Diarmuid was his; God had written it on their skin. Diarmuid had held the relic and lived; discarded the relic and lived.

God was telling him he wasn’t wrong. His choices were what was intended. And that meant the Mute must live.

It had to. It _had_ to.

***

When they got to shore, their enemies were gone and the Mute was still breathing. Barely: lying in sand, grasping at life with shallow groans, blood across his stomach, but breathing.

“I’ll get help,” the boatman promised, with a kindness Diarmuid did not understand. Perhaps it was God working through this man, or perhaps his desperation was simply too clear to be denied.

It did not matter: that promise of help was all the permission Diarmuid needed to sprint across the sand, collapsing to his knees by the bloody body of the man he was meant to be with. He wanted to pull him to his chest, but somewhere in his mind lingered the snippet of a memory from when he was very young. One of the monks had slipped along a cliff, breaking a leg with a terrible snap, bone protruding from skin. Moving him had been dangerous; it had taken all day to do it safely.

Diarmuid would not be stupid enough to cause more damage just because of his sudden desire for touch. Instead of moving the Mute, he lay by his side in the sand, whispering, “You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine. God chose us, you have to be fine.”

The Mute’s eyes batted in half awareness; along the edges of his lips a smile flickered.

_Coda_

Diarmuid thought often of what Brother Ciarán said about peace, in the days and months and years that followed, as he nursed the man God made for him back to health, then nursed their life into a flourishing bloom.

When the Mute was strong enough to walk again, Diarmuid considered going back to the monastery. They could pick up where they left off, if the brothers would forgive him for what he did to the relic. Perhaps it was possible to live his life for God and the Mute all at once, side-by-side. They had done it before, and when he proposed it, the Mute merely shrugged: wherever Diarmuid went, he would follow.

But a few days later, the Mute pressed their lips together, and Diarmuid’s world turned inside out again.

He had not realized he was still asking questions, and yet, that kiss was an answer: _this is so much more than what it was before_.

(He did not dare call falling into the Mute’s embrace heaven, even though there was no better word; it was too much like blasphemy to assert he had found God’s kingdom in another person’s touch. But he also could not call it sin, when it sang so true.

God had marked them for each other, and surely that must also include this.)

They did not go back to the monastery. They wandered, until they found a remote patch of empty land. They built a house. They worked the fields. They rose at dawn and prayed with the rising sun; they fell asleep entwined in each other’s arms.

***

They cultivated peace, carefully, day by day, and Diarmuid never questioned that his life belonged with the Mute.

After all, it was written on his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feedback is loved (including any typos you catch...I wrote a lot in the last few weeks, I imagine there are some.)
> 
> This was originally written for an exchange, and re-dated for author reveals. I'm sorry if you've seen it already.


End file.
